Pluto/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Tim and Moby are in a dark classroom. There is a projection screen in the front of the room. Moby sets a carousel of slides on a slide projector. TIM: Nice work. An image of a typed letter is projected onto the screen. Tim reads the letter aloud. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, is Pluto really a planet? From, Grant. That's a good question. Although it was called a planet for more than seventy-five years after its discovery in 1930, Pluto is not a planet. It was demoted in 2006, after astronomers decided that it didn't meet the same criteria as the eight classical planets. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, it's actually classified as a dwarf planet. Other dwarf planets include Ceres in the asteroid belt, and a body named Eris. An animation shows the dwarf planet Ceres, floating among asteroids in the asteroid belt. An image shows Eris, floating alone in space. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, Pluto is pretty tiny. It has a moon, Charon, that's nearly half as big as Pluto itself. They actually move around each other every six and a half days or so. An animation shows Pluto and Charon revolving around each other as Tim describes. TIM: Pluto also has four other small moons: Hydra, Nix, Kerberos, and Styx. An image shows the four moons in a very dark part of space. TIM: There may be even more that we don't know about yet. Since it's so far from the Sun, Pluto is frozen and dark. Its rocky core is covered with ice, but not the water kind. The slide projector shows a cross-section of Pluto. Two layers of rock surround a small, hard core. TIM: Pluto's ice is made of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide, stuff that would be gas here on toasty planet Earth. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Oh, right. Pluto is also different from the eight main planets in our solar system because it was formed later on. NASA has categorized Pluto as a Kuiper Belt Object, which means that it's made of material left over from the formation of the main planets. Also, Pluto crosses the orbit of another planet, Neptune, which no other main planet does. The slide projector shows the orbital paths of Pluto and Neptune and how they cross. TIM: And its orbital path looks very different from that of the main planets. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Right, there are times when Pluto is actually closer to the Sun than Neptune. More of Pluto's orbit becomes visible, along with the orbits of other planets. MOBY: Beep. TIM: In 2015, NASA's New Horizons probe became the first spacecraft to visit Pluto. The probe sent back the first clear pictures of the surface, as well as its moons. The projector shows an image of Pluto floating in space. TIM: New Horizons' data will help solve some longstanding mysteries about this distant world. Tim changes slides. An image appears of Moby, jumping on the bed and smiling at the camera then turns to Moby. TIM: Oh. Oh. I seem to remember your saying that there was no possible way you had anything to do with the broken spring in my mattress. Moby steps away. MOBY: Beep. Moby shakes his head. TIM: Oh, really? Tim projects the next slide. It shows Moby examining Tim's broken mattress spring. MOBY: Beep. TIM: You're probably the worst liar ever. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts Category:BrainPOP Science Transcripts